We're still in the slow news period, so let's talk about something we discussed before: blocking advertisements on websites. Up until, well, today, I didn't block ads - not because of some ethical objection or whatever, but simply because I couldn't be bothered to setup AdBlock. Today, after taking a closer look at some of the websites I frequent, I decided to take the plunge and install AdBlock on all my machines. The following set of screenshots should pretty much explain why.

I completely agree with you. They even do it for things that makes much more sense if it was just done in text.
Sometimes I need to look up something, for example how to do something in Lisp, and I can only find a video.

Not only is it anoying because I don't have flash (and gnash isn't there yet) Also the 10 minute video contains only a paragraph of information, you can't really skim it, and it can't be indexed by any search page.

On topic:
The web is really starting to look like crap. (Altough remeber the geocities pages). I have a filtering/concentration disablity and that used to be no problem, now it's extremely tiresome to browse the web.

I am starting to move to Links as my webbrowser more
and more, not because it looks cool (it does ) but because AdBlock/FlashBlock and NoScript don't cut it anymore.

I completely agree with you. They even do it for things that makes much more sense if it was just done in text.
Sometimes I need to look up something, for example how to do something in Lisp, and I can only find a video.

Yeah, I've noticed that one myself. Screencasts might be a good way to show how something works, but they're also often overkill - some text and screenshots will do almost as good a job, without forcing the visitor to spend time watching the video.